O’Brien likens P2P file sharing to the ‘home-taping’ of the 80′s – suggesting, like Pharell, that it is a way of introducing new listeners to your music, who will then go on to buy concert tickets, merchandise or other music products, if they really like the music. He also cites services like Spotify as the more attractive answer to the ‘deeply unsexy, utilitarian’ file sharing websites – criticising the recording industry for not moving fast enough to create services that cater to consumers taste for easy access to digital music. He also stresses the importance of connecting with your fans, ‘building your tribe’, even for huge acts like Radiohead.

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According to a report today, Lady Gaga’s track “Poker Face” was one of the most popular tracks during a five month period on Spotify and was played more than a million times. So how much money does she get paid by STIM (the Swedish Performing Rights Society) for this massive achievement?

SEK 1150 – that’s around $167 or roughly 113 Euros.

But that’s not quite the whole story… The performing rights contribution splits out to $0.000167 a play, but so what? Lady G (or more likely her record label) will also be being paid directly by Spotify with a flat fee per play (a couple of pennies per track) and a chunk of the service’s ad revenue. Lady Gaga’s direct revenues from that many streams will be in the five figure $USD range, and the performing rights system probably does more to support their own bureaucratic infrastructure than it contributes towards paying her a sensible wage. It would be interesting to know exactly what proportion of their receipts is paid to artists, and what is spent on running the society, as well as why the PRS collects a fee for every track played on services like Spotify, even those of tracks by non-PRS-members.

Lily Allen has previously complained on Twitter “@citricsquid did you know the major own hold massive stakes in Spotify, and earn advertising revenue at yet another loss to the artist” that she’s not seeing any of the revenue from her Spotify plays, but this is likely to be because the majors have all bought shares in Spotify, and are both giving them an easy ride on the music licensing fees and taking their own substantial cut of anything that comes back. Lily Allen would do well to have a little faith in Spotify, given her well publicised feelings against file sharing.

Of course, this diminished revenue wouldn’t be a problem if she’d signed her music up for digital distribution to with someone like RouteNote, who get the full per track rate, and only take 10% on the back end.

That said, the decision of the majors to support Spotify and other streaming services is a pragmatic one; if it is really the case that freemium services are reducing piracy and providing a way for labels to ‘monetize’ their catalogues online then it makes sense for the majors to be in on the ground floor and take advantage of future success, especially since they’re looking such ghastly financials [pg. 33 for the headlines] in the face. Right, now that’s sorted we can all go back to wondering whether or not the Lady is a trap…

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The heated discussion continues without her – politicians, ISP’s, heavyweight industry bodies, and artist coalition groups are pitching in, as well as individuals like Allen. Opinions range between extremes; some think that sharing files helps boost artists profiles, others that it is choking the life out of the industry by draining revenue that should go to fund the success of major artists and the development of up-and-coming new acts. What is unarguably true is that people are not going to stop sharing music across the internet. If a great new band starts up next door to me I want to tell people about them, the same if I stumble across them on the web, and the most convenient way to let my friends know about them is by sharing their content online. Where there is an easy, legal way to do so, any sane person would use it – that’s one of the reasons why Myspace was so successful, there was (and still is, although their star seems to be waning) so much great music up online for people to discuss – but where there isn’t an easy way to do it, like when people refuse to allow their music to be available for free, then people will look for other, less forthright, but still convenient ways to do the same thing.

What then, is the right way forward? Filesharers (many of whom are avid music fans, gig attendees and t-shirt purchasers) won’t stop wanting to hear and distribute good and new music online. For obvious business reasons, ISP’s are extremely reluctant to bear the costs involved in filesharing, or to pass it on to their customers. Artists are undoubtedly losing revenue, since if it’s quicker and easier to steal an album than to buy it, and the likelihood of any repurcussions is tiny, then album sales will fall. Someone needs to come up with a way that music fans can share music onliine, that is legal, and that profits artists. Who could that white knight be?

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Read the rest of the article over at ArsTechnica.

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• SongBeat: The New Music Piracy Tool That Will End Up Closing Soon Enough! – December 2, 2008

An essential part of Pirate Bay’s defense has been that the service is simply a tool that has many legitimate uses. The trial is entering it’s 6th day.

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• SongBeat: The New Music Piracy Tool That Will End Up Closing Soon Enough! – December 2, 2008
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Songbeat has launched a new version of their service which seems to be taking piracy to a new level.

It’s a desktop app that lets users search for music on Seeqpod, Project Playlist, Last.fm and other sites, and then download the files and import them into iTunes or Windows Media Player, or burn them as a CD. It’s free in its basic edition, which only allows 25 downloads, but users have to pay €19.99 for the premium version to download as much as they want.

This has to be illegal! They are now a company that is profiting directly from piracy. Not according to Songbeat: “The downloading of music is not fundamentally illegal. However, it lies in the hands of the user to discern whether or not they have the right to download the particular music file at hand.” Even Musically thinks this’ll end up in court.
(via TechCrunch)

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